The NHS e-Referral Service (ERS) is an electronic referral system developed for the Health and Social Care Information Centre by IT consultancy BJSS.
[2] The release date was delayed by seven months from that originally announced after it failed an assessment by the Government Digital Service.
[4] The system went live on Monday 15 Jun 2015, but on 17 June it was shut down and GPs across England resorted to fax machines in order to refer patients.
[6][7] In July 2015 users were advised to switch to Google Chrome in order to reduce the four-minute loading time to 50 seconds.
Of the 28 known issues at that date, 23 have a simple workaround that can be used which are published on the website, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.